The library metaphor is a versatile tool it seems, the way I understand it:
My motivation is safety, static non-agentic AIs are by definition safe (humans can make them unsafe but the static model that I imply is just a geometric shape, like a statue). We can expose the library to people instead of keeping it “in the head” of the librarian. Basically this way we can play around in the librarian’s “head”. Right now mostly AI interpretability researchers do it, not the whole humanity, not the casual users.
I see at least a few ways AIs can work:
The current only way: “The librarian visits your brain.” Sounds spooky but this is what is essentially happening right now to a small extent when you prompt it and read the output (the output enters your brain).
“The librarian visits and changes our world.” This is where we are heading with agentic AIs.
New safe way: Let the user visit the librarian’s “brain” instead, make this “brain” more place-like. So instead of the agentic librarians intruding and changing our world/brains, we’ll intrude and change theirs, seeing the whole content of it and taking into our world and brain only what we want.
Thank you, daijin, you have interesting ideas!
The library metaphor is a versatile tool it seems, the way I understand it:
My motivation is safety, static non-agentic AIs are by definition safe (humans can make them unsafe but the static model that I imply is just a geometric shape, like a statue). We can expose the library to people instead of keeping it “in the head” of the librarian. Basically this way we can play around in the librarian’s “head”. Right now mostly AI interpretability researchers do it, not the whole humanity, not the casual users.
I see at least a few ways AIs can work:
The current only way: “The librarian visits your brain.” Sounds spooky but this is what is essentially happening right now to a small extent when you prompt it and read the output (the output enters your brain).
“The librarian visits and changes our world.” This is where we are heading with agentic AIs.
New safe way: Let the user visit the librarian’s “brain” instead, make this “brain” more place-like. So instead of the agentic librarians intruding and changing our world/brains, we’ll intrude and change theirs, seeing the whole content of it and taking into our world and brain only what we want.
I wrote more about this in the first half of this comment, if you’re interested
Have a nice day!